Course Description:
Geographic information technologies continue to drive the representation and management of complex as well as everyday spatial information. As a result, increasing numbers of for-profit and non-profit organizations have recognized the need to transform their information into a spatial format. The demand for collaborative and participatory skills in the use of these mapping tools has, of course, been furthered by this general trend. Therefore, the goal for this course is that each student will become an independent and effective GIS user while developing their collaborative skills in the use of GIS for spatial analysis and representation. To meet this goal, this course follows a participatory workshop model, drawing on Elwood (2009) -- an intensive, hands-on experience in which student teams use GIS in collaboration with community partners. These partnerships will involve students in a full range of collaborative GIS: working with team members and project partners to identify project goals, acquiring and preparing spatial data for GIS analyses, communicating with clients to assess progress, managing spatial data, and producing necessary maps and analyses. The lecture, reading, and seminar discussion components of the course will focus on topics important to collaborative development -- to be prepared to implement, manage, and apply in a variety of research and applications areas, and in multiple geographical and institutional contexts.

Learning Objectives:
This course will expose students to the technical, critical, and collaborative skills necessary to analyze the consequences of human/environment interactions within a geographic information system. The workshop model will allow students to develop and apply these skills in partnership with community organizations. This course is designed to help students:

Extend their skills in digital data preparation and handling in a GIS environment,

Gain experience across the full range of steps and tasks that comprise GIS applications,

Practice skills that will help them navigate the ‘human’ side of successful GIS applications,

Become an independent and ethical GIS practitioner who is prepared to work in a diversity of institutional, geographical, and political contexts, and

Produce an applied GIS project from start to finish that may be used to showcase their GIS

abilities to future employers or academic programs.

For those enrolled in GEOG548, the course will additionally help graduate students:

Further their experience leading discussion on contemporary topics in the GIS & Society tradition, and

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About Me

Matthew W. Wilson is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky and a visiting scholar at the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. He has previously taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and his current research project focuses on the founding of the Laboratory for Computer Graphics at Harvard in 1965, a catalyzing moment in the advent of the digital map.